Out of darkness, with a room full of anxious people mildly shuffling their bodies in anticipation for the man himself, Jai Wolf, to take the stage; light emerges as Wolf approaches his deck. After prepping the crowd with a light song to slightly elevate our BPM, Jai Wolf pauses for a moment to ask if we’re ready to go on a journey with him. Without hesitation he bursts into a sonic landscape which teases the crowd with portions of his viral hitIndian Summer, along with samples from Odesza.
You begin to see the raw connection he has to the duo/drum line. Although it’s clear he is heavily influenced by Odesza, you get to see his rendition of a show they put on, with a touch of his own creativity and individual experience.
With an album titled The Cure to Loneliness, you would expect a soothing piece that warms the heart. You received the latter when listening through the album by yourself, but a whole new meaning to the album title is shown when given the opportunity to experience it live. As abstract and vague as this may sound, Jai Wolf shows us that one of the cures to loneliness is music itself. He teaches you through the experience that when you provide a group of people a sound full of the proper frequencies and vibrations, that they can all experience the same realm of feeling.
With an album containing a song title Telepathy, it sheds light on the raw power Jai Wolf believes music to hold over us as humans. After experiencing not only his performance but the synonymous shift of energy held within each individual as the beat would change, I can’t help but ask if music allows us to reach a fraction of what could be considered telepathic abilities.
Many would argue that that is a bunch of mumbo-jumbo, but it’s hard to shake the reality that those frequencies spewing from the speakers in that venue conveyed a message much more efficiently than any human could do, with even the strongest of vocabularies. I can wholeheartedly say that Jai Wolf allowed me to share a genuine connection with all people in attendance, even those that were a story above, viewing from the balcony.
View all of the pictures from Jai Wolf at the Concord Music Hall in Chicago on April 26th below. Thanks to Mark Reddington Photography for capturing these incredible shots!
